Ryan Swanson: Hello and welcome again to the Satisfied Program here on the Thee Generation Podcast. This is Ryan Swanson and I’m ready to dive into another lesson in moral integrity. Now as you know the last couple of episodes have focused on our relationship with Jesus and I want to tackle and issue a problem that may have arisen by now and try to answer that for you. This is our 12th episode so we’ve made it through a full year of these. That’s hard to believe but we started last January with Satisfied, and we’ve really come on quite a journey together, and I’m excited about it. I’m excited about the feedback I’ve been getting, and those of you that have found this helpful. Now, the feedback I’ve been getting in the last few weeks kind of tells me that there’s probably three groups, three categories of listeners right now.

There’s those that have taken us up on the challenge in the last couple of podcasts to set aside the time and purpose to meet with Jesus. And the first group of people that I’ve heard from have successfully met with Jesus. They’ve had a wonderful time with him. And there are those that have just said, this is exactly what I’ve needed right now, and thank you for that. And I appreciate their response.

And there’s group number two that maybe you didn’t even bother. Maybe it’s because you’ve tried this before and it didn’t work. Maybe just meeting with Jesus doesn’t interest you. Maybe it seems too good to be true for whatever reason, maybe it’s just an apathy, but you’ve listened to the podcast, but really you haven’t put much weight on this idea of meeting with Jesus. And so I guess I could put the response for those people in the category of those that haven’t written to me because they probably wouldn’t if they haven’t even tried this or put any kind of a weight into it.

But in the third category, is those that have set aside the time, you have purpose to meet with Jesus, you’ve tried it so to speak, and nothing happened. And I had one response like that. One young man wrote to me from Colorado, and he said essentially, look, I set aside the time, I chose a place, I went to it expecting to meet with Jesus, I even communicated, made it clear to Jesus that I’m not leaving until he shows up and then, well nothing happened. And he wrote to me and essentially said, respectfully, what gives? I tried everything, what gives?

And my email back to him said essentially, let me get back to you on this. I didn’t wanna just quickly write something and guess at it, but it really caused a question to come up in my mind that we’re going to tackle in today’s podcast. 

Are we guaranteed to meet with Jesus? When we set a place, when we set aside the time, when we come to Him in desperation that we’ve been speaking on, are we guaranteed to meet with Jesus? And I’m gonna share with you some verses and where this study has led. But the answer, maybe the thesis to this is yes, it is guaranteed but only when it is preempted by a search. Let me say that this way, every meeting with Jesus is preempted by a search. So what is a search? Jeremiah 29 verse 13, and ye shall seek me and find me when ye shall search for me with all your heart. And ye shall seek me and find me when ye shall what? Search for me with all your heart. 

So the finding is preempted by the seeking, by that search, by searching. So what is a search, let alone what is a search with all your heart? Well, I was driving the other day for my side job with a landscaping company and I passed a sign that someone had stuck beside the road that said big letters wanted. And then below that it said $25,000 reward for any information that leads to finding, and then I gave this young lady’s name there and a picture of her. Now that is somebody on a search, and I thought to myself, I wonder how long before that sign comes down. When will that ever come down? When will that person, whoever put that there, maybe it’s a husband, maybe it’s a father, mother, sister, who knows who put that there, but whoever put that sign there cares enough to put a $25,000 stake on that, and when will they decide, “ah, you know what, I think it’s been long enough. I think we’ve searched long enough. Let’s give up on this one and move on”. I don’t know who put that sign there, but I guarantee you, unless they find that young lady pictured on that sign, I don’t think the same person that put the sign up will take it down. I think it will have to be someone else. I don’t think that whoever could put a $25,000 stake on that cares for that young lady so much that they will never conclude that search until they’ve found her.

And I think that defines a search. A search has no time limit. Now this young man that emailed me from Colorado, he had set aside an hour and a half. And honestly, I called him up and commended him. I mean, who does that? What 16 year old, I think he was 16, what 16 year old sets aside an hour and a half to meet with Jesus? And that showed this guy was desperate. He was on a mission. And I commended him for that. That’s an excellent start for him to do that in this journey and his mission—an excellent start to set aside that amount of time. But was that enough time? And you say, what’s this gonna take? I mean, am I gonna be there for six hours, 12 hours? What’s it gonna take? But I don’t mean necessarily how long is that first meeting? I mean, when Jesus doesn’t show up, what are you gonna do about it?

If you set up a meeting with your best friend and you had everything planned out, he knew the place he was supposed to be at, he knew the time, he knew what you were gonna be talking about, everything, you had everything communicated, everything ready, and then you show up there and your best friend is a no-show. There’s nobody. He doesn’t come. Are you just gonna go home and say, oh man, I thought that guy cared about me? Well, very likely if you loved him enough, you’re gonna be worried about what happened and you’re going to begin a search. See, when you set up a meeting and nothing happens, that doesn’t end the search, that begins the search. And that’s how this is with Jesus. If you’re convinced enough that Jesus cares for you and you set up a meeting with him and he’s not there, you’re gonna wonder what’s wrong. You’re gonna search your heart, is there something here that I need to change? Is there sin in my heart? But then you’re just going to say, okay, well. One thing’s for sure, I’m not stopping until I find Him. This is going to begin a search for Jesus. It’s a mission. It is a lifestyle.

Whoever put that sad sign out by the road looking for that young lady is desperate, but they’ve embarked on a search that has no guarantee. But when we read Jeremiah 29:13, “ye shall seek me and find me when ye shall search for me with all your heart,” we are guaranteed to find our Lord Jesus Christ. We are guaranteed that we are not left comfortless. And it’s different from every other search.

You know, it’s interesting, if you were to go to Jerusalem in the old city and you stand back and look at the last standing wall of the old temple there and you see the wailing, what’s called the wailing wall, and countless Jews coming day after day to offer their prayers to the Messiah, and to plead for the coming of the deliverer, their savior, their Messiah. And let’s say you catch one of those orthodox Jews as he’s coming away, and you were to just ask him, hey, how did it go over there? How was the experience? Did you meet with God? And he’d probably say something in Hebrew, but essentially, he’s gonna say, no, we’re not there to meet with God. We’re there to seek, to search for, for our God, for the coming of our Messiah. That’s what they’re looking for. They are on a search. It’s not a meeting, it’s a search. And they’ve been doing that for how long? Over 2,000 years. How long are we willing to search?

They’re searching for someone they will never find because their Messiah already came, they will never find them there. There is no guarantee in their search. Muslims, it’s very similar, they’re praying five times a day. Now there’s different groups or camps of the Muslims, but the Shia Muslims, for example, are praying for what they call the 12th Imams, for the Mahdi, they call him, and he is essentially the Muslim Messiah, and they’re praying five times a day, pleading for the coming of their deliverer, their Messiah, but it’s, it’s a false religion. There is no guarantee of that. It’s a search with no guarantee yet hundreds and hundreds of years have gone by praying five times a day by millions of Muslims around the world with no guarantee, nothing. But yet we have the guarantee and the promise that we will find him, we will find him. You see the difference between the Jews and they’re seeking their Messiah, their unnamed and unknown Messiah, and then the Shi’a Muslims seeking their 12th Imam, and then us. Well, it’s not like we can, our only hope is to go and plead for Jesus to come back someday. That’s a biblical thing to do. John said, even so, come Lord Jesus and we certainly can, and it’s good for us to ask and pray the same. But that is not our only hope to meet with Jesus, that he comes back someday.

You see, Jesus chose not to leave us comfortless. He has sent the Holy Spirit so that we can commune with Him. We can have fellowship with God now. And so when we’re going and seeking and our search is not even just for the coming, the second coming of the Lord, but like all these other religions, but our seeking is for a current meeting. It is something guaranteed even while we’re still here on this earth.

So how much more than the Jews? How much more than the Muslims should we Christians be willing to seek and continue to search for our Jesus? We have the only guarantee, the only true promise, but let me give you one more verse. Hebrews 11:6, “he that cometh to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.”

That’s the idea of the expectation. If you’re going to come to God, you must believe that he is. You cannot come to this feeling it out and hoping and well, maybe he’s there. Let’s try this. Let’s give this thing a swing and see what happens. If you’re gonna come to God, you must believe that he is. Don’t disregard him, disrespect him with unbelief coming and just saying, well, I’ll sit here for an hour and see what happens. You need to come with expectation. And if he doesn’t show up, the expectation does not fall away. Your expectation and your desperation only grow and it becomes your motivation for a search that has no time limit. You will find him. You will find Jesus when you search for him with all your heart. 

A true search is a lifestyle, friends. It’s a mission that utilizes every moment and every resource. It is fueled by desperation, the idea that this search cannot be in vain. And it is motivated and validated by expectation that this search will not be in vain. “He that cometh to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.”

You’ve got to believe that he’s not going to leave you hanging, that he is going to answer your search. You know, thankfully our young man from Colorado, he went back. He didn’t just end with an hour and a half. He went back. And this was before I emailed him back with any of this result from my own study. It wasn’t me. He just on his own, he was desperate enough where he went back to search. And he found Jesus. He emailed me right back and said, “never mind”. It was the same guy who said, “what gives?” Now emailed and said, “I found him. I found him.” He said, it wasn’t like anything I’ve ever experienced, but Jesus showed up. 

I hope by this point that you have begun your search, that you’ve set up the meeting with Jesus and that no matter what happened, whether you met with him or not, that the search did not end, it began. So please don’t quit. Don’t stop until you find him. If you’re going to begin this search, then you also need to conclude that you will not stop until you’ve found Him. When you have that attitude, the search with all your heart, you’re guaranteed to find Him. You will. Because an expectant search for Jesus has never been in vain.

Once again, I welcome more feedback. Let me know where you’re at. It’s helpful for me on my journey. I’m walking this through with you guys. So write to me at satisfied@theegeneration.org and share where you’re at on your journey. I’d love to hear and I’d love to pray for you. I pray for those that have contacted me, but I’d love to be praying for you as well.

Well, there’s still so much of this journey in finding Jesus that we need to cover. And one of those aspects is what do you do when you find Him? After that first time of experiencing Jesus, then what? What happens the next time? And I think that’s where we’re going to go in our next podcast, so be ready for that coming up in January. And by that point, I would love for everyone to be able to say, every listener to be able to say, “I have set up a meeting, I have a purpose to meet with Jesus, I have begun my search.” Maybe you’ve met with Him by then, and that is fantastic. Maybe you’re still searching. But there’s no reason why any of our listeners right now should come to the next podcast when they haven’t begun their search yet. If you’re serious about being satisfied with Jesus so you don’t have to be gratified with anything else, and if you’re desperate enough, then you’re going to begin this search and you will not end it until you find Him.

Well, it’s been an extremely helpful study for me. I hope you found this episode helpful. And I look forward to speaking to you next time as we continue our journey to be less gratified and more satisfied with Jesus Christ.